Bane of Souls, a terrible tale of murder, woe, doom and feathery hats, is now out on Smashwords!

Must say that I'm relieved, although there's still more work to do, even before the Amazon edition is begun. I've had a quick look at the various main formats (pdf, Kindle, epub) and the formatting seems ok, but if you do spot a problem (especially a howler) please do let me know so I can correct it.

For those wondering why there are two fantastic images of the cover art, that's very simple. Some formats (like Kindle) have it added by Smashwords as a jpeg, but the pdf format doesn't. So, it has to be added in-document (at the top of a Word file) to be seen in a pdf file, but this has the added effect of there being two for some other formats.

I'm also really looking forward to getting back to Altmortis. I love writing, and this technical stuff is something I'm not that fond of, to be honest.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the book, buy it, and emotionally blackmail all of your friends into buying it too.

Hmm.My plan was to get everything ready for Smashwords, upload it there and just ship it to the other retailers (including Amazon).However, I think a recent change means that the odds on getting from Smashwords to Amazon right away have shrunk rather significantly. Kindle versions of Bane of Souls would still be available on Smashwords, obviously, but not through Amazon.

I've almost finished the formatting of the book (just need to check one or two things) and I should have a nice window of free time (and peace and quiet) later this week to try uploading it. My earlier plan was to just have it shipped from Smashwords to Amazon, but given the change I think I'll probably upload it to the former and then, separately, to the latter.

It's more of a faff, but I would then have my own Amazon page, as well as being able to sell it directly through the site.

Yes, the cover art for the somewhat delayed Bane of Souls has been completed by the lovely Lee Yoong, who can be found over on DeviantArt at http://leeyoong90.deviantart.com.

It was actually a much more collaborative and interesting process working with her on the artwork than I'd imagined it would be. It's quite cool getting an initial sketch and then seeing it become more fleshed out and then refined with extra detail.

However, there's still a little way to go before the book's out. For a start, I need to do a final read-through for mistakes (on a whim I recently checked the first chapter and found one, but it stuck out like a sore thumb). After that there are extra pages (copyright stuff, dedication [if I have one], an About The Author bit and link to this site and so on), and then the formatting. No idea how long that will/should take, but I'm pretty rubbish at technical things.

I'm really pleased with the cover art, and also very happy to get it out of the way. As an author (well, soon-to-be), almost all my work's done entirely solo, so it's a bit of a change to have such an important aspect of the book done by someone else.